The outcome of the project was a museum exhibit which is now on permanent display at the Orlando Science Center in Orlando, FL. The following fictional vignette describes the exhibit as might conceivably be seen by a mamber of our target audience (middle school children)..

A child (let’s call her Silvia) is visiting the Orlando Science Center with her middle school class. She walks by an exhibit about something called the “Turing Test”. She doesn’t know what this Turing Test is, but becomes intrigued by the British-accented voice emanating from a lifelike avatar beckoning her to help it perform this mysterious test. She is curious enough to try this exhibit, and decides to press the bright green START button on the touch screen. The exhibit then begins ….

The avatar is of none other than Dr. Alan Turing, the famed British mathematician, computer science pioneer and World War II hero. The avatar of Dr. Turing is shown in an uploaded image, standing in front of a replica of the Colossus computer that helped break the Nazi’s encryption code in World War II. Turing briefly explains the test that he conceived as a way to assess computer intelligence. He explains that if one is (unknowingly) conversing with a computer but is not certain whether one is interacting with a computer or with a real person, then the computer can be said to be intelligent. Turing then asks for Silvia’s help in building her own avatar so that they can subject it to the Turing Test. Then, under Turing’s guidance, Silvia “creates” a new avatar and endows it with a brain (programmed a priori) containing knowledge on some topics (e.g., planets, dinosaurs, natural disasters).

Prompted by Turing, Silvia selects a face for the avatar from a gallery of photos of people of diverse ages, ethnicity and races. She opts for the photograph of Myles as the face of her avatar. Upon making this selection, a pre-built avatar of Myles that has strong resemblance to the real Myles, comes on screen, as shown in the second uploaded image. The virtual Myles has been given a priori knowledge about planets, mythical creatures, dinosaurs, and natural disasters, and is now able to answer simple but interesting questions from Silvia in these domains. Unlike the Turing avatar, the Myles avatar is not scripted. Instead, it uses a sophisticated artificial intelligence program developed at the INtelligent Systems Laboratory at the University of Central Florida to understand the questions and provide answers through spoken natural language.

After a few question-and-answer cycles, Turing asks Silvia whether she might be led to thinking she was speaking to the real Myles, rather than an avatar of him - the essence of the Turing Test. In response to her answer (regardless of whether it is yes or no), the avatar then states that although it is advanced, this technology still requires bright young minds like hers to help make passing the Turing test a reality for future computers. Finally, it encourages Silvia to consider a career in computer science and then says goodbye.

The intellectual merits lie in the use of the avatars as the medium through which to communicate about the avatar technology itself. This is done through a creative and engaging interaction that forms the core of the delivered exhibit.  This communication medium, we believe, has great transformative potential in formal and informal science education. Additionally, we assessed our work through the museum audiences who evaluated it in its intended natural environment of the museum floor, rather than in a laboratory. The conducted research showcases the new advances in virtual humans to a public audience.  Lastly, the moderator avatar (Turing's in our case) c...

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